A critical review of local and world news. This blog originally commented on the Moncton Times and Transcript but has enlarged its scope.

Monday, October 3, 2016

Oct. 3: The biggest world story in the irving press is that......

Boston might be counted in the same time zone as Monton, New Brunswick.
Be still, my heart.
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http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/british-columbia/poll-canadians-multiculturalism-immigrants-1.3784194

What a wonderful idea! Of course, make immigrants conform to our ways, speak only our language, dress as we do.... Our native peoples would be much better off today if they had followed such a policy toward our immigrant ancestors.

The possibilities are endless. Chinese could be forced to operate restaurants that serve only hot dogs. Pizza would be a thing of the past. Music would be restricted to that which can be played on a guitar and sung through the nose. Africans would be required to rub white cream all over themselves. Japanese cars would be prohibited.

Let's get over it. What will happen is what has happened for centuries. The immigrants will change us and we will change them. Then they will join us in insisting the next group of immigrants should be forced to conform.

Actually, we all desperately need to change - and the time is short.
Keep a close eye on the American election. The future that only a few want to happen is crashing in on us.

The American political system has always been designed to favour the rich. That goes all the way back to the beginning of the U.S. when, in many states, the poor were not allowed to vote.

There were always programmes for the rich. The so-called Indian wars were fought to steal land for wealthy land speculators. The civil war was fought (no - not to free slaves) to enable the manufacturing north to keep out competition from British manufacturers. The American imperial wars - South America, The Phillipines, Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Libya, Iraq, Syria - have been fought - no, not to spread democracy and not because their leaders were 'bad men'. They were fought so wealthy Americans could get control of their resources and their cheap labour - and get even wealthier.

In recent years, there has been an added touch for the rich. Those wars to benefit the rich are fought - and paid for - by everybody else but the rich. That's becuase the rich get to avoid taxes by hiding their money in tax havens.

Finally. elections cost money, the kind of money that can come only from the wealthy. That's why it took the U.S. almost 200 years to introduce any significant social legilation. At that it's been minimal and, like Obama care, designed to provide profits for the rich than it is to help the poor.

All of that is why the U.S. is now suffering massive problems in health care, education, poverty, and the biggest budget deficits in human history.

And that's why this hopelessly corrupt system has now produced the two, worst and most disliked presidential candidates in American history. One is an egomaniac for whom everything has quick and simple solutions (which won't work.) The other is openly corrupt and the servant of the very wealty.
And Canada is not nearly so different as we might like to think. (Indeed, some Canadian governments (New Bruswick springs to mind)are close to the Trump/Clinton model.

Canadians have to make large changes - and soon. And we won't get them by reading or watching most of the news media. We have to do it ourselves.
The starting point has to be the Green party and the NDP because those are the only ones left. But both are dreadfully whimpy and naive. Both need fires lit under them. The change we need is a huge one. The wealthy have to pay taxes like the rest of us. They also have to be weaned away from government handouts in the form of loans, super-lush contracts, grants.... All of these are simply legalized theft.

Sounds like too much to do? It might be. But the alternative is a continuing shift of all money into the pockets of the very rich, and a level of abuse that neither we nor our environment can survive. In short, we need a government that serves us, not just the irvings and their hangers-on.
And the time is very short.
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Or, if thinking hurts your head, read Norbert Cunningham's column. It's all about how we have to cut government spending because we're getting too deep into debt. Alas! Cutting spending won't help because then the people with big money will just steal even more.
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Justin is not his father. He is simply an old style political hack who does what big money tells him to do. Expect nothing from him on climate control.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/28/canada-pacific-northwest-lng-natural-gas-pipeline-british-columbia
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And here's a related story that the irving press did not consider a major one. Just a hint of irving's complete coverage of all levels of government.

The oil business is showing no interest in pursuing a means to end fossil fuels. And it always has a "duh, it creates jobs." Yes. Killing Syrians creates jobs, too. Killing native peoples created jobs. (But none of t his creates taxes. It's the rest of us who have to do that, and to pay the taxes that the wealthy and influential don't pay but who need our tax money to pay for their wars.
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Here's a story chose I because it's good example how to write propaganda while pretending to write news. It begins with a few lines of Putin warning the U.S. not to intervene in Syria. That make sense because a)it's illegal for the U.S. to be in Syria and b)it raised the strong possibility of a U.S./Russia confrontation. And, by the way, Russia does have a legal right to be there.

But after just a few lines, the story is mostly about how the Russians are the cause of all the trouble. It comes, of course from The Associated Press.

Actually it's even worse than Putin says. The U.S. illegal wars in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq and Syria almost certainly mean that these regions and their neighbours will not see peace for decades, if ever. The wars have destabilized them so that we can expect rebels to continue their interventions for as far as we can see into the future. The invasion of Iraq, sponsored by that ass, Bush, has laid the groundwork for World War Three.

In an election dominated by the issues of whether Hillary has pheumonia and whether Trump owes taxes, there has been no serious or informed debate over the situation created by Bush and made worse by Obama. But it's far the biggest issue facing the world. (Well, not the biggest. No. That's the new, Boston time zone.)
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The next one is long, but excellent stuff. It's by a man who was, for 27 years, an anaylst for the CIA and a chief advisor to the very conservative president Reagan. He examines the case of the downing of an airliner in Ukraine, and suggests the account we're getting of it is a lie. He also sees what most of our news media do not - deliberate provocation of Russia by, for example, sending Canadian troops to Latvia.

There are leading people in the U.S. who want a war with Russia. And they don''t care if it's nuclear.

https://consortiumnews.com/2016/09/30/russia-baiting-and-risks-of-nuclear-war/
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Then there are other countries getting involved in the war in Syria on the American side. And being on the American side means supporting jihadist 'terrorists' just as the U.S. does. Yes. The U.S. which poses as fighting terrorism actually supplies and trains it.

Is it possible that nobody at the irving press knows that? All those editors and commentarists - and nobody knows about it?

No. It's not possible they don't know. So it's obvious. The boss doesn't want that news in his paper. And, like everybody else in this province, they kiss up to the boss.
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There is a war going on in South America. It's been going on for over fifty years. It's a war against American (and Canadian) corportations that have been exploiting the people of South American countries and their people for over a century. It's a war in which thousands have been tortured, killed, or just disappeared in recent years. The torture and killing have been under American guidance, and sometimes by American agents.

Does the Canadian government know about this? If it doesn't, it must be one of the few governments in this world that doesn't know.

The irving press never mentions the story. (Perhaps it's shy.) But never kid yourself. The people who support this exploitation and murder would quite as happily do it to you.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45588.htm
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Here's another story that hasn't been important enough for the irving press to mention. This time it's the danger of war between India and Pakistan. And you don't care because it's not happening in New Brunswick? Well, consider this. They're both nuclear powers.

I can remember many years ago sitting at many meetings of the nuclear disarmament movement. Only the U.S., Britain and Russia had nuclear mombs at that point. But most people were pretty relaxed about it. After all, these weapons were so devasatating that we were assured the world would phase them out.

Now, the nuclear club is much, much bigger. And we can no longer believe that our politicians will come to their senses.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/10/03/india-pakistan-tension-continues-to-mount-after-terrorists-attack-indian-army-camp/
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We have helped to create the tens of millions of refugees in this world. But we have done very, very little to help them.

That raises a question that I note never gets asked in the 'jump for Jesus' section of the irving press Faith Page.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/dennis-gruending/2016/10/globalization-indifference-helping-world-ignore-its-refugee-
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Newspapers are running into hard times. So they want governments like the Canadian government to bail them out. Of course. These newspapers, most of which pimp for their wealthy owners, daily chant the enterprise of what they like to call entrepreneurs. They criticize ordinary people who want better wages so they can afford to live, better housing, better food, more education.... And, if they do, the papers depend on a Norbert who will tell them they should take risks and word hard - like our entrepreneurs.

But if the entrepreneurs get into trouble? Read this.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/john-miller/2016/10/memo-to-newspapers-bail-yourselves-out
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The U.S. government says that the CIA no longer carries out torture. I would be very surprised if that's true. Certainly, no-one has ever been punished for torturing, even though it was illegal under American law even as it was carried out. So far, the only people who have been punished are the ones who revealed what was going on.

Nor, it seems, do we know the extent of types of torture. As well, nothing has ever been done for those whose health and lives were destroyed for a dozen years and more by foul conditions and torture - even though most have been released because there's no evidence they did anything wrong.

Tell me, again, what a sweeheart Obama is. Tell me again how we can trust our political and economic leaders to do the right thing.

https://theintercept.com/2016/10/03/former-cia-detainees-describe-previously-unknown-torture-tactic-a-makeshift-electric-chair/
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Tell me again how President George Bush is a born again Christian. Let's discuss this over coffee in the barn at the Irving Chapel. I assure you - it has the best God money can buy.

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About Me

born into poverty in Montreal. (1933 was a bad year to be born.) Kicked out of school in grade 11. Became factory hand, office boy.
Did a general BA, mostly at night at Sir George Williams University, and partly while a youth worker for YMCA, camps, etc. Then teacher training at McGill.
Taught gradea 7 to 11 for six years. Loved it.
Quit to do MA at Acadia, then PhD (History) at Queen's.
Taught history three years at UPEI, then some 35 years at Concordia U in Montreal.
Loved the teaching. Thought the profs had more pompous and useless asses among then than is really desirable outside a zoo.
work experience:
factory, office,social group work, office,camp director, teacher.
Radio - c. 3000 broadcasts, mostly current events.
TV - many hundred appearances, mostly commentaries.
Film - some writing, advising, voice-overs.
Writing - no count, some hundreds. Some academic, but mostly for popular market, and ranging from short stories to stories to newspaper and magazine columns to history books.
professional speaker - close to 2000.
Awards for the above? yep